Cinderella on Planet of the Apes
by ScipioSmith
Summary: In a world where apes rule, Cinderella has the misfortune to look entirely human, and is therefore a slave to her simian stepfamily. But with the help of her animal friends and her mother's spirit, Cinderella is able to attend the ball and win the heart of Prince Ash, son of the Caesar. Can true love conquer all, even here?
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

Once upon a time, there was a world ruled by apes, while humans were trod down in poverty and servitude.

In this world, there was a tiny kingdom, peaceful and prosperous and rich in romance and tradition. In this kingdom, a young ape gently born, only scion of a wealthy family, fell in love with a human woman, and earned her love in return. Against the wishes of his family, they were wed.

They lived together in a stately chateau, and were soon blessed with a child, a little daughter whom they named Cinderella. Although he loved his wife and daughter very much, the gentle-ape was sad, because Cinderella looked entirely human, and it was whispered that she was not his daughter at all. His sorrows only increased when his wife died, leaving him and Cinderella alone.

Although he was a kind and devoted father, who gave his beloved child every luxury and comfort, he felt acutely the lack of a mother's care for Cinderella, as well as the absence of any friends her own age, for the ape children of Cinderella's class avoided her. And so he married again, choosing for his second wife a widow of good family, with two daughters just Cinderella's age, by name Anastasia and Drizella.

It was upon the untimely death of this good ape however, that the Stepmother's true nature was revealed: cold and cruel, she hated humans, and had no intention of loving one as her own child, the equal of her own child. Cinderella was abused humiliated, and finally forced to become a servant in her own house. And yet, through it all, Cinderella remained ever gentle and kind, for with each dawn she found new hope that, someday, her dreams of happiness would come true.

 _Author's Note: I don't even know where this idea came from, but hopefully you'll join me as I make a go of it and see what happens. The story will initially follow the plot of the 1950 Disney film, then continue on beyond that. The apes I have in mind are more the very human-ish ones from the original Charlton Heston movies, rather than the very ape-like ones from the Andy Serkis films, but as you will see there will be a bit of a mixture of both. There will be no actual Planet of the Apes characters (at least that isn't the plan right now) but some of the names will be used (so the prince will be named Ash, after Blue Eyes' friend from Dawn of…and instead of the King we will have the Caesar, etc._


	2. Ugly

Ugly

 _Cinderella was the most beautiful ape in the ballroom._

 _The light from a thousand candles, reflecting off the marble floor and columns, shone brightly upon her lustrous black fur, fur that contrasted with the luminous white gown that garbed her. Silk slippers enclosed her large, simian feet. And she could feel the hands of her handsome chimpanzee partner around her waist, holding her gently but tight as they whirled and twirled together across the dance floor, two apes amongst their own kind._

 _"How lovely she looks," said all those watching them dance. "What a handsome pair they are."_

 _And he smiled at her, and in his eyes she saw not a trace of revulsion, or disgust, or contempt. In his eyes she saw only love, a love that would never wilt and never fade away._

 _Cinderella's heart beat faster as he leaned in to kiss her-_

Cinderella was awoken by the sound of birdsong and the sudden splash of light falling across her face as the curtains to her tower bedroom were pulled open.

 _Good morning, Cinderella,_ the little bluebirds chirruped (not exactly, they didn't speak to her as the mice did, or rather they didn't sound to her ears as though they were speaking, but Cinderella had found that she could tell what they were 'saying' to her all the same, and they were saying that.) _Wake up! Wake up!_

Cinderella groaned softly. She didn't want to get up. She didn't want to begin her daily routine, she didn't want to be sneered at by her stepmother and stepsisters. She wanted to go back to sleep, back to her dream where her chimp was waiting for her.

She wanted to be an ape, to look like an ape the way her father had, the way her stepmother and stepsisters did, the way that respectable people did.

She wanted to be normal.

Unaware of such considerations, and equally unaware of what pleasures they had interrupted, the birds continued to wish her a good morning. She heard their greetings turn to confusion as she didn't immediately rise to greet the dawn, and them. She loved them, as she loved all of her friends who made her life bearable, but that didn't mean that she was always as enthusiastic about the dawn of a new day as they were.

 _Why can't she hear us? Is she ill?_

Cinderella felt a little guilty when she heard that. She didn't want them to worry about her unnecessarily.

 _She doesn't look ill at all._

One of them grabbed hold of one of her braids and yanked it out of the way so that the other one could holler into her ear. _GET UP, CINDERELLA. IT'S MORNING!_

Cinderella gave another soft groan as she rolled over onto her face, with the pillow held over her head. One of the birds tried to creep in under a crack between the pillow and the mattress, but after Cinderella nearly pulled it down behind him he escaped quickly.

 _And serves you right!_ Cinderella thought, unable to stifle a slight giggle. _Honestly, I'm sure there must be times when you don't want to get up either._

Now he was standing on top of her pillow, leaning over it as though it were a crevice, cheeping down at her. She admired his persistence, it was sweet of him to be so dedicated.

That didn't stop her from flicking him on the bum with one finger when he wasn't looking.

She caught sight of the other bird hiding her beak behind her wing as though she was trying to stifle a laugh, even as the male of them chippered out his outrage for the world to hear.

Cinderella couldn't keep up the pretence any longer. It would have been cruel to have done any more, and anyway it was too funny listening to how offended he was, how wounded his dignity, how unspeakable her offence. She laughed in a voice rich and ringing, as she rolled over and sat up in bed to confront her first visitors of the morning.

"Well, serves you right for spoiling people's best dreams," she declared, as she assumed a slightly prim stance with her hands resting gently on her knees.

With cheeps and gestures both the two birds wasted no time on waxing eloquent – as eloquent as a bluebird could be, in any case – on the glories of the morning.

"Yes, I know it's a lovely morning," Cinderella said. "But…it was a lovely dream too." She sighed, and leaned back against her pillow as though she could return there, as though she could fall into a trance like sleep and return to the wondrous place from which she'd been ejected. But of course there was no going back to a dream, once you had woken up, any more than there was any going back into the past once past was fled. There was no returning to her wonderful dream, any more than she could go back to the time when her father was alive and he had shielded her from all the ills of the world and most of the torments to which her hideous human looks condemned her.

 _What kind of a dream?_ asked both the birds together.

Cinderella shook her head. "Uh-uh, can't tell.

 _Why not?_

 _Because how can I explain to you that I wish I was something completely different to what I am?_ Cinderella thought. _How can I explain to you that I hate the sight of myself in the mirror? How can I explain that I wish I was an ape? Would you even understand what I was talking about?_

"Because if you tell a wish, it won't come true," she said. "And dreams are wishes from the heart."

 _They are?_

"Yes," Cinderella said. "In dreams, your heart confesses its most secret desires, even the ones you've never spoken aloud. It confesses, and it wishes for them." She smiled. "And so, if you only believe, if you keep on believing no matter how your heart grieves, the dream that you wish will come true." _If only I could believe that myself._ But how could her dream possibly come true?

She got out of bed, and winced a little at the pain in her feet as she put her weight upon them. Sadly, that was practically all the time and so bed as about the only time when she was not in pain, if not in agony.

Cinderella had come to believe some years ago that the humans she resembled, and shared half a kinship with, were not meant to live without shoes. And yet that was the world she lived in: lower class apes went without shoes, the orangutans and gorillas and even those few unfortunate chimps all went without because, in their sort of occupations, it was easier for them to use their legs to grip and climb. And so, although humans could not do any such things with their feet, they went barefoot also because how could a human be better than an ape in anything? Shoes were reserved for those like Stepmother, or Anastasia and Drizella, for gently-born apes of quality and worth, to enclose their large simian feet.

Cinderella had worn shoes once, when she was a girl. Her father had them specially made for her, since no cobbler made shoes for feet as small as hers in ordinary practice. Stepmother had put a stop to that, of course. Frivolous expense. Wasteful. So now she walked the wooden floors and the city streets barefoot, and suffered all the blisters and splinters that came with it.

Still, she mustn't complain? What would be the point? Much better to smile, to find what happiness you could in the world, and to not be dragged down by the malice of others. Have courage, and be kind, as her mother had said.

Cinderella hummed gently to herself – or more accurately she was soon humming to the mice crawling out of the nooks and crannies in the wall, and the birds coming in through the window. She hummed to them, as they helped her with her chores, first making the bed: as Cinderella turned over the sheet, eight birds hopped up and down on the pillow to plump it up for her the next night.

Jaq, her oldest and her dearest friend, the informal chief of all the mice who lived in Cinderella's house and under her protection, scampered quickly up the wooden bed-post until he was, if not at Cinderella's level, then at least much closer to it than he would have been down on the ground.

"Good-a mornin' Cinderelly!" he declared. Unlike the birds, Jaq did seem to speak her language, or at least that was how she heard him. Judging by how Anastasia and Drizella reacted to mice it seemed fairly safe to say that they didn't experience them in the same way she did.

Cinderella smiled. "Good morning, Jaq, did you sleep well?"

Jaq bobbed his head up and down. "Nice an' easy. Cinderelly, last night found a nail on the stairs, wrapped a thread around it. Be carefee."

"I'll remember to look out for it as I'm going downstairs," Cinderella said. She kissed her two forefingers, and pressed those same forefingers to his furry cheek. "Thank you for taking care of me."

If mice could blush, then by the way he was acting now Jaq certainly would have been. "Thatsa nothin' Cinderelly; all the things that Cinderelly does for us'n…itsa nothin'." He glanced up at her. "Lookin' pretty this mornin', Cinderelly."

Cinderella chuckled. "You're very sweet to lie so, Jaq."

Jaq's back straightened with affront. "Jaq notta lyin'. Notta lyin' not one bit. Cinderelly real pretty-pretty. Cinderelly beautiful."

Cinderella sighed. "If you believe that Jaq, if you really believe that, if you're not just trying to make me feel better…then thank you. Thank you, so much, even more than before. But that doesn't make it so. I'm ugly, Jaq; I'm hideous and I hate looking at myself in the mirror. And there's nothing that you or I can do to change that."

"Whosa says so?"

"The world, I'm afraid."

"Huh, the world," Jaq sneered scornfully, as he folded his arms. "Iffa world believe that, then the world it don't know _nothing!_ "

Cinderella didn't argue the point with him any further. He meant what he said, and he meant well and besides...if there was someone in the world who thought that she was beautiful then who was she to argue, even if that someone was a mouse? "I don't know what I'd do without you, Jaq."

Jaq grinned up at her. "Jaq-Jaq not know what heda do without Cinderelly, neither."

Cinderella chuckled. "Then it's a good neither one of us is going anywhere, isn't it?"

Not going anywhere in the general sense. In the specific sense, Jaq was going somewhere else right now as Suzy and Perla ushered the boys out of the room so that Cinderella could get dressed. She shooed them out under the crack in the front door, or back into the mousehole crevices they had crawled out of, as Cinderella took off her blue nightgown free from any observing male eyes. As her friends dusted off her frayed and patched blouse - she only had the one outfit to wear, and that it had held up this long was entirely due to Cinderella's skill with a needle and thread - Cinderella herself untied the ribbons holding her braids in place and brushed the curls out of her strawberry hair until it hung straight down to her shoulders. Hair. It was a pretty shade, that she conceded - or perhaps that should be conceited, she thought to herself, some last refuge of a vanity that should have been driven from her long ago - and had any ape lady possessed a coat of such a colour then she would have called them beautiful. But this was not her coat, this was just hair, human hair; and it seemed that no amount of dreaming could make it otherwise.

Cinderella washed with the help of her friends, and dressed with the help of her friends in an outfit that, well, she could work in it and that was the point, but...did it have to show so much of her bare, pale legs. She swore that people stared at them when she ran errands in town. The skirt was brown, the bodice black and both equally drab and dull, only the blue-green sleeves provided any dash of colour to offset the incredible drabness of the rest.

Cinderella sat down in front of the mirror, her hideous reflection staring back at her. Beautiful, Jaq said. Cinderella could find precious little beauty to admire in what she saw. Her eyes, perhaps. Yes, she was fond of her eyes. Blue, she had them from her mother; blue like sapphires, blue like the sky and the ocean. Blue like...like freedom to fly or swim wherever she would, like her bird friends had, save that they didn't want to leave her. Yes, she was fond of her eyes.

She often thought it must have been her mother's eyes that her father fell in love with. Why else would he have lowered himself in the eyes of his family to marry a human, but for her eyes. Her eyes...and the beautiful soul that lay behind them.

Cinderella was filled with shame at the thought of what her mother would think of her now, hating her own appearance, filled with loathing at her reflection. Like Jaq, she had praised Cinderella's beauty once as well. 'You are a beautiful girl, Cinderella,' she had said. 'My darling, beautiful daughter. Do not forget that. Never forget.' But how could she remember, when it was such a lie? In this world, only apes could be beautiful.

Her eyes were lovely, her mother's eyes; but the rest of her? She had a snub nose that looked a little like an ape but it could not make up for her pale, hairless skin. Nothing ever could.

"Cinderelly?"

Cinderella looked down to see Suzy standing on the dressing table, holding up a turquoise hair-ribbon for her. Tying back her hair only made her look more human, but it did mean her hair wouldn't catch on anything while she was working.

"Thank you," Cinderella said, taking the ribbon and tying it in a bow to hold back her hair.

It was at this point that Jaq reappeared, bringing Timothy, the youngest of the mice, with him. Both were chattering excitedly as they climbed up the leg of the table, so excitedly that Cinderella couldn't actually understand what they were saying.

"One at a time, please," Cinderella said, with amusement in her voice. "Now, Jaq, what's all the fuss about."

"Gotta new mouse in the house, never saw before. Visabor, visabor!"

"Oh, a visitor," Cinderella replied. It was always nice to have a new addition to the family. She opened up one of the draws. "Well, she'll need a dress-"

Jaq sniggered. "Hesa boy, Cinderelly."

"Oh, well that does make a difference," Cinderella conceded. "He'll need a jacket-"

"Needsa Cinderelly help first," Jaq said. "Hesa inna trap-trap."

Cinderella's eyes widened. "In a trap! Well, why didn't you say so?" she ignored the aching in her blistered feet as she rose from the dressing table and began to run downstairs.


End file.
